1. Field
The present teachings relate to waveguide-based lasers, such as fiber lasers, that output high power short laser pulses. More particularly, the present teachings relate to pulsed lasers that provide improved performance such as reduced pulse width and that preferably include modular designs that are compact and rugged.
2. Description of the Related Art
High power laser sources are of interest for practical applications in various fields. High peak power pulsed lasers are desirable, for instance, in medical and industrial applications, remote sensing applications, and in optical parametric oscillators. Some specific exemplary applications include use as pump sources for optical amplifiers and Raman lasers for use in medicine and spectroscopy. Rare-earth-doped double clad fiber lasers offer an excellent combination of high power and special beam quality that may be particularly useful.
Various of the following references discuss laser systems and are hereby incorporated herein by reference:                [1] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/576,772 filed on May 23, 2000 by M. E. Fermann, A. Galvanauskas, and D. Harter entitled “Modular, high energy, widely-tunable ultrafast fiber source”;        [2] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/627,069 filed on Jul. 24, 2003 by M. E. Fermann, and G. C. Cho entitled “Integrated Fiber Laser Pulse Source With Pulse Width Control”;        [3] U.S. Pat. No. 6,151,338 issued to S. G. Grubb, D. F. Welch, and R. Zanoni in Nov. 21, 2000 entitled “High power laser optical amplifier system”;        [4] O. G. Okhotnikov, L. A. Gomes, N. Xiang. T. Jouhti, A. K. Chin, R. Singh, and A. B. Grudinin, “980-nm picosecond fiber laser” IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 15 (11), 1519-1521 (2003); and        [5] H. Lim, F. O. Ilday, and F. W. Wise, “Generation of 2-nJ pulses from a femtosecond ytterbium fiber laser” Optics Letters, 28 (8), 660-662 (2003).        
Currently, conventional pulse lasers have practical limitations. For example, the optical components in conventional commercial short and ultra-short pulse lasers are normally mounted mechanically on a mounting plate such as a breadboard. Such mounting of components can result in a bulky packaging and can suffer from mechanical vibrations and environmental instabilities. Additionally, such mounting requires frequent alignment to achieve the optimum performance. Thus there is a need for improved lasers and laser systems.